Many mornings in October were rough for people holding chip stocks.
You open your account, and your unrealized gains are shrinking. Semiconductor ETFs are down by double digits in a month, and memory ETFs have fallen even further. The earnings are still clearly on the rise, but the stock prices keep plunging without looking back. You can’t help wondering: Did I get something wrong? Should I do something? If I don’t decide soon, will it be too late?
In an interview at Y Combinator, Jensen Huang said something in passing. It was so understated that if you were feeling anxious, you might brush it off as just another feel-good platitude. But if you’ve just made it through October and look back, you’ll see it’s actually a very specific instruction for what to do:
“You don’t have to overcome every challenge in life in a single day. You just have to get through that morning. You need to get through today—just today.”
He wasn’t talking about mindset. He was talking about how Nvidia itself survived.
A man who bought a 500-page book on starting a business
When Jensen Huang talked about the early days of starting his company, there were two things he remembered clearly.
First, he realized there was so much he didn’t know, and no one was teaching him how to start a company, so he went to a bookstore and bought a book on entrepreneurship. When he got back and opened it, it was about 500 pages long. He joked that by the time he finished reading it, the company might already be bankrupt and he and his wife would have spent all their money.
Second, he was terrified of raising money. He had to sit in front of a group of people and answer their questions, but he had no idea whether he’d be able to. Then he added: honestly, even today, he can only just about answer them.
These two small stories matter because they puncture an illusion: you think other people started only after they were ready, but they weren’t. Nvidia didn’t set out only after figuring out every step. It set out first, then learned along the way, hitting walls and catching up as it went. He later said he liked asking, “How hard can it be?” but immediately admitted, “Honestly, it’s usually much harder than you think.”
So he offered some very practical advice: let the hardships come a little at a time. Don’t try to think through every problem the future might bring all at once, and don’t rehearse in advance how you’ll face people if you fail. It’s important to consider risks, but if thinking about them leaves you with nothing but fear, it’s hard to keep moving forward.
October brought no bad news—just expensive things paying off their debt
Put Jensen Huang’s words in the context of October’s chip stocks, and a lot becomes easier to understand.
The list of the ten biggest declines among large ETFs in October reads like a verdict on the same story:
Semiconductors: PSI fell 23.91%; memory: DRAM fell 22.60%; artificial intelligence: BAI fell 17.89%; data centers: TRFK fell 16.94%; semiconductors: SMH fell 15.43%.
Five slots, all chips. And there was one hiding in plain sight: South Korea’s EWY fell 17.85%, and its two largest holdings are SK Hynix and Samsung—look through the ETF and it’s still a memory story. Six of the ten slots were filled with the same story.
The most striking line was DRAM.
On October 28, SK Hynix had just reported better-than-expected results: revenue rose 32% quarter over quarter, memory contract prices rose 20%, and its fourth-quarter shipment outlook pointed to even faster growth. Yet in the same month, the ETF holding it fell 22.6%. Earnings rose while the share price fell; both things were true at once.
The reason isn’t complicated. When prices were rising, these ETFs were bought as one story—AI, memory, data centers. Different names, but the same few companies in their holdings. After a year and a half of gains, expectations had already been priced for “better than expected.” Even strong earnings were just delivering on those expectations. Delivery doesn’t bring a surprise, leaving profit-taking as the next move.
October brought no bad news—just expensive things paying off their debt.
The key word in that sentence isn’t “bad news”; it’s “expensive.” Being expensive isn’t a sin. It means the market has already priced in a lot of good news. You don’t need bad news for prices to fall; “good news that isn’t good enough” is all it takes to trigger a repricing.
But “just get through today” doesn’t mean “do nothing”
When Jensen Huang said to get through today first, he wasn’t telling you to close your eyes and tough it out. He added: when you come across something important, go learn about it—and get started as soon as you can.
Applied to the context of late October, this means: while others are paying off their debts because things were too expensive, look at whose business is actually improving and who has simply been swept up in the same story and dragged down with it.
AMD offered a very clear point of comparison.
Q3 revenue was $13.38 billion, up 45% year over year; data center revenue was $8.55 billion, up 97%—nearly doubling. Its Q4 revenue guidance was about $17 billion, above market expectations, and its share price briefly rose more than 9% after hours. On the earnings call, Lisa Su said she expects the data center business to double year over year next year, accounting for as much as 80% of the company’s total revenue.
AMD and Intel face the same kinds of macro concerns—slowing PC demand and whether AI spending can last. But AMD is affected differently: it relies primarily on a foundry model led by TSMC, so it can turn growing data center orders into revenue and earnings faster without shouldering the massive fab capital expenditures that Intel does. When the market sold off chip stocks in October, it was selling “the same story.” But once earnings reports actually came in, investors began to distinguish which companies need a comparable amount of fixed assets to generate growth—and which don’t.
That’s another meaning of “just get through today.” Today, you don’t need to make a perfect long-term judgment. Today, you need to do one small but important thing: separate “it fell” from “the thesis is broken.”
Midterms are over; the uncertainty has passed
The early November rally added a macro footnote to “just get through today.”
Democrats won both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, even flipping traditionally Republican strongholds such as Texas and South Carolina. Before the election, this was one of the market’s biggest uncertainties; as the results came in, uncertainty turned into certainty. The odds of a Democratic sweep on Polymarket briefly surged to 99%.
Once the bad news was out of the way, investors began buying back in. The Nasdaq rebounded, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 2.63%, AMD extended its gains after hours, and Nvidia and Micron also climbed after hours. The market hadn’t suddenly fallen in love with the Democrats; it could finally remove a long-standing variable from its pricing models.
Interestingly, what Democratic politicians have in their portfolios doesn’t match the “anti-tech” narrative. Pelosi’s disclosed holdings are dominated by NVDA, AMZN, GOOGL, AAPL, AVGO, and MSFT, with technology, software, and AI accounting for roughly 70% or more. The accounts of other Democratic lawmakers also repeatedly feature MSFT, NVDA, QQQ, and SMH. There’s a long distance between political narratives and the reality of their holdings.
Questions you can’t answer today may become answerable after you try, ask, and learn
Back to Jensen Huang.
Only after sharing those two small stories did he say, “You don’t have to overcome every challenge in life in a single day.” What came before gave those words weight. He wasn’t looking back from a place of success and offering a polished line. He had lived through that morning when he bought a 500-page book, was afraid to sit in front of investors, and had only a few bills in his pocket.
For many people, October’s chip-stock selloff brought a morning like that to their portfolios. Gains were shrinking, their judgment was being questioned, and the road ahead was unclear. All of that is real.
But today, you don’t need to answer every question. You only need to figure out one thing: is what you own “paying off its debt because it was too expensive,” or “is the business actually deteriorating”? If it’s the former, today’s drop isn’t a reason to sell; if it’s the latter, today’s drop isn’t a reason to buy the dip either.
Taking things more slowly and asking for help when you don’t know something both count as moving forward. Jensen Huang’s final words are worth remembering for anyone who’s hesitating:
I’ll keep learning and make my way there.
Not knowing enough at the start can certainly make you feel uncertain. But give yourself a little room, too. Questions you can’t answer today may become answerable after you’ve tried, asked, and learned.
Just get through this morning.
Disclaimer: This article shares opinions and information and does not constitute investment advice.